"Zero"

2009

Now that legal tender has
                      lost its tenderness,
And its very legality
                is so often in question,
It may be time to consider
the zero---
                long rows of them,
empty, black circles in clumps
                                       of three,
presided over by a numeral
                                          or two.
Admired, even revered,
these zeroes
                of imaginary money
capture
       the open gaze of innocents

like a vision of earthly paradise.

Now the zero has
a new name:
                             The Economy.

As for that earthly
                   paradise—well…

“Zero” was first published in The Yale Review, Vol. 97, no. 4 (October 2009), p. 19.  It is also included in Dorothea Tanning's book, Coming to That: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press, 2011, p. 51, and may not be reprinted without the publisher's permission.